Sunday, July 21, 2013

with silver bells & habanero peppers, part 2

I still have a garden! I will make it through the summer or die trying.

The good news!

We have...









For the record: I way over-edited the images from the last garden post. And immediately I decided I hated them (but had done too much work to re-do the post) - so these are completely unedited, with the exception of the captions (which I did on Over). My strawberries are that gorgeous.

The bad news!

I'm struggling with the rest of my flowers. My lobelia, once a gorgeous globe of blue & white, is now just brown. Perhaps its because I didn't de-bud it fast enough and now I cannot catch up. Or can I? If I were to take off all the dried out buds, would it stand a chance? Because I'll do it. I have some free time.

My gorgeous dahlia that has already had it's own blog post and half a dozen photo shoots seems to be fresh out of buds. sadtrombooooone. I keep watering in the hopes that it'll bloom again, but it is making no promises.

My bell peppers are either the slowest maturing plants ever, or they are not going to make peppers. I cannot tell. I'm not giving up on them yet. But their buds are small and they don't seem particularly interested in blooming.

Things I'm learning!

Stop being so gee.dee impatient with the strawberries, son. They have to be total ripe before they taste like anything but sour death fruit.

This Chicago summer has been brutal. My once-a-day watering might not be cutting it. I'm going to kick it up to two days while I can but I'm nervous about how the plants going to fair while we're out of town.

Cucumbers were a bad choice. They need to be able to run free and cannot be contained by a window box. I'm getting these tee-tiny baby cukes, which are worth the cost of the plant in adorableness but I'm nervous that they are not going to get much bigger before they die.

Basil goes in EVERYTHING! And if you can't figure out how to get basil involved, make pesto! And if you're bored with pesto, add an avocado and make creamy pesto! But you will always have more basil and it will never ever die.

Banana peppers don't taste how you think they taste until you pickle them. So, get on that! Pickle some peppers, peter piper. (I am so scared of canning that even though I've bought the cans, they might never come out of the box. Luckily, the internet has some fridge canning options that I'm going to try out with this first batch).

Also this!
Years ago my friend told me that when a woman turns 30 she has a baby, buys a dog, or starts a garden. I'm noticing a lot more veggie-pics these days. -- (posted by a friend on facebook.)

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She's pint-sized and amazing.